{the blog}

Torgesen Family Times

{We are trying to enjoy and record the moments that make life special}

Wow! Things have gotten behind on this ol’ blog of mine! I’m trying to keep this going as I love sharing our adventures. But, life is busy and we are having so much fun, that I rarely sit at my computer much anymore.

The most favorite day of our whole vacation (as if everyday wasn’t my favorite on vacation!) was this day – the day we decided to take everyone snorkeling. For those with young kids – you know how much this must mean. We have a 3 year old and a (now) 7 year old, who just learned to swim last summer. We have a 3 year old who can’t “swim” without floaties and/or a life vest. But, we did it anyways. Alex was loving his snorkel in the pool and Sara was so easy going and brave in the shallow ocean right outside our condo that we decided to go for it. At the very worst, one of us would just sit on the boat.

We made arrangements with the same place we went scuba diving and they took us to a calm bay about 20 minutes north of where we were staying. It was protected by a coral reef and the waters were calm and warm.

In short – this was my best thing we did all vacation. Connie and Steve joined us too! I loved seeing Alex snorkel in the ocean and see the sea life with us. I loved seeing Sara and her floaties and how brave/calm she was with the whole thing. We saw a sea turtle – which is what I wanted to see. We saw a sting ray, many fish, lots of coral, and an eel. We put Alex in a wetsuit to try to keep this little man as warm as possible (he has no body fat – this kid is pure skin and muscle). Sara didn’t really get too cold in the pool and the ocean water was warmer than that – so she was fine. Plus, there were no wetsuits her size.

A funny story was when Lance saw the sting ray – he poked his head up and told me there was a sting ray and to take a look. The kids both started screaming at this point – thinking the stingray was going to sting them! Great – two screaming kids in the middle of the coral bay. Maybe sting them like like a jelly fish? I don’t know… We calmed them down by telling them that the stingray wasn’t interested in us, and it was way down on the bottom (maybe 10-12’ down) and was going to stay there. It took a while, but they did calm back down and enjoy themselves again.

This is how Sara did part of the snorkeling trip – either on my back or on Lance’s back. Also, for a while she would just do her little swim/kick all by herself – of course with her big smile the whole time. She just loved it!

We went diving on the 5th day of our vacation – Lance, myself and Grandpa Steve. The kids stayed with Grandma Connie and played on the beach and never fought once, we heard (! they only fight when we are around, I guess).

We had an amazing time! I got a refresher (taking my air out, clearing my mask, etc) since I haven’t dove since our honeymoon 10 years ago. It was a good thing! I didn’t remember much, but just like riding a bike – it came back to me easily. I’m SO glad I did it. The real dive was very easy compared to the refresher and I felt very comfortable.

We took these videos with our go pro silver. It takes amazingly cool HiDef videos. It’s a wide fish eye angle, so things get distorted a bit. But, we love the clearness of these movies. It also seems like it has stabilization, but I don’t know that for sure. It only has 2 buttons on the camera, plus one button for wifi. It’s kinda intimidating for me – I’m used to way more buttons! But once you get the hang of it, it’s OK. Actually – the go pro was Lance’s “baby” on this trip. He was taking movies left and right. Also, as a note – the go pro doesn’t have great sound, or good sound at all. It’s all waterproofed, so sound is not good or even there much at all. Also, the colors are so less vibrant than what you see when you are down there. It looks all blue.

Our kids are also loving to blow kisses lately, so I thought when we were waiting for our 3 minutes while surfacing, that we could blow kisses to them underwater to let them know we were thinking of them. They loved it when we showed it to them when we got back.

After a big day at Chichen Itza in part 2, Lance and I celebrated Valentine’s day by walking to the store (~20 minutes each way) with backpacks to get as much food as we could carry. Surprisingly, cars (that fit 6 people) are pretty expensive to rent down there, so we didn’t have a car. It actually wasn’t too bad of a walk. Some nice person even gave us a ride back on their golf cart when we were back on the resort.

We surprised the kiddos with Mexican Valentine’s Day donuts. We all loved them!

After a day of relaxing and getting a lay of the land in part 1, we headed off to a pre-arranged trip to Chichen Itza. It was another long car ride (~1:45 minutes each way) and the kids were not excited about this one! Sit in a car for how long???? And look at OLD ruins???? Boring!!! We entertained them well enough with electronics and arrived at the site on a cloudy and relatively cool day. We were told many times how lucky we were we were able to be so early in the morning before all the tour busses arrived and to have it be overcast, cloudy and “cool”. I hired a guide to walk us through the site. The kids were not interested and instead ran around the nice grounds and just got their legs stretched out.

Some of the cool things the guide showed us is that when you clap at just the right spot at ground level – the sound bounces back and sounds like a bird. That was REALLY cool! We stood there for quite a while and the kids were even entertained with that fact. The equinox was about a month early, and we weren’t there at sunset/sunrise anyways, but the picture (below) of the shadow appearing of the snake from the angle of the light striking the building was really cool! It’s truly one of the 7 wonders of the world!

picture showing the snake traveling down the side of the pyramid.

The satisfy the kids a bit and to let us listen to the guide I had hired (!), I gave the kids a turn with my point-and-shoot camera. They had tons of fun – as you are about to see! And they took some really good photos. Lots of photos, but some of them turned out great!

Lance and I were in a picture at the same time! Photos courtesy of Sara.

When Alex had the camera – all Sara wanted to do is “1-2-3” and then get pulled up and jump.

Then, Sara got it back again and took a picture of me taking a picture of her – so cute! To the right is our guide.

And sometimes I get so frustrated with these two… but other times they are so nice to each other I just want to remember this!!!!

Big brother Alex picking up little Sister Sara to help her take pictures. He carries her around for a while like this, but she gets pretty heavy!

I gave Sara the suggestion to have Alex stand by the wall and then take a picture of him, and she is quite the photographer!

And Lance gets in on the picture too!

She’s my little mini-me in so many ways – and now she’s a photographer! Maybe her own “real” camera is in her future!

There was so many vendors there. We were walking to one of the cenotes (sinkholes/underground river) and they were just lined up. It was like walking a gauntlet with two young kids.

We finally broke down and go the kids a whistle (which was a bad parenting decision since those things were annoying!) and Alex got a jaguar. They taught him how to do it and it sounds like a jaguar growl! Here are Lance and Grandpa looking a the price on the calculator.

Chichen Itza was pretty big – but we got to see most of it. The place really started filling up and we were on our way out.

Sara got tired and her little legs couldn’t walk anymore – so we traded off carrying her. That girl is getting heavy!

On the way back to our resort, we stopped in a nice town Valledolid. It was a beautiful old colonial town of about 50,000 people. We ate at a nice restaurant that our driver recommended – El Meson del Marques. They were famous in this area for two things – Pavo en Relleno Negro (turkey with blackened peppers) and Conchinita Pibil (chicken cooked in banana leaves). The fresh squeezed juices were divine and we sucked them down after all the walking we did. We were STARVING and didn’t bring too much for snacks for the kids. We ate everything up and enjoyed every second! The Relleno Negro is black in color and looks pretty unappetizing, but it tasted SO good!

Grandma and Grandpa got the Relleno Negro and I got the Conchinita Pibil – I tasted both and it was like heaven on earth! Divine!